In the insurance industry, it is common to insure structures, such as homes, against damage, such as, for example, damage caused by thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, and floods. In the case of storm damage, structures in the path of the storm may be damaged by hailstones (or hail) generated by the storm. More particularly, the rooftops of structures in the path of a storm may suffer hail damage.
In the aftermath of such a storm, insurance companies may receive and process claims related to hail damage. Where a storm spans a large area or deposits hailstones over a densely populated region, the number of claims made as a consequence of the storm may escalate rapidly. In addition, because each claim may be made in relation to a large surface area (e.g., a rooftop), the expense associated with repairing hail damage in the wake of a thunderstorm may be substantial.
Fraudulent insurance claims of hail damage result in unnecessary expenses for insurance providers. Specifically, in some cases, bad actors may intentionally damage a rooftop in the wake of a storm to give the rooftop the appearance of hail damage, notwithstanding the fact that the rooftop was not damaged by the thunderstorm. To create such mechanical damage, an individual may use a device known as a “lean stick” (e.g., an elongated stick or staff). The individual may repeatedly press the lean stick into the rooftop to produce a series of craters, which, the individual hopes, will be mistaken by the insurance company insuring the structure for hail damage. In other instances, individuals have been known to repeatedly strike a rooftop with a rounded hammer, or, in some cases, to strike a rooftop with a sack, such as a tube sock, filled with rounded objects, such as a plurality of golf balls or rounded stones.
Conventional techniques that attempt to differentiate between damage occurring naturally as a consequence of a thunderstorm, and that as a result of mechanical damage may have several drawbacks, such as being manually intensive, inefficient, annoying, ineffective, and/or time intensive.